


Her Atlas

by hooksandheroics



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Angst, F/M, I blame my evil friend, sometimes we need the angst to cope, this is me coping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-13
Updated: 2015-03-13
Packaged: 2018-03-17 16:19:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3535973
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hooksandheroics/pseuds/hooksandheroics
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clarke couldn't get a word in. She couldn't.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Her Atlas

It’s a quiet night – void of the crickets’ melancholic songs. He inhales the stinging cold air and revels in the pricking of his throat and stomach. He’s come to love the little reminders that he’s alive after so many brushes with death (and one where he actually dies – but that’s a memory for some other grave time). It’s been a year since the siege of Mount Weather, a year since _everything else_. He’s come to love the little reminders that they’re alive.

He wants to think they’re past the struggle of surviving, that now they’re at least starting to thrive instead, and as he gazes out into the central campfire where most of his friends are sat talking and laughing ( _laughing_ – the first time he’s heard anybody from his friends laugh is some months ago when Jasper accidentally stepped into a rather deep hole thinking it was just a puddle and parading around camp muddied and frowny, much to everybody’s amusement).

He heaves out a heavy sigh.

Every night he does this, count the things that have happened from the moment he woke up until the moment he’s ready for bed. He counts that today is Harper’s third month of pregnancy and that Tyrell is nervous as all hell; he also counts the progress in the medical center they’re building and the way Abby and Kane sent him a look of approval when he told them that; he counts now that there’s this rumor that someone saw Raven hit Wick with a wrench in the head for grabbing her ass while they were working on one of the solar panels.

He also counts that for the first time since the siege, Jasper finally met Monty’s eyes during lunch. Just that. No hellos, no nods, just that. But he counts it as a victory, nonetheless. It has been a good day and he can’t wait to tell her.

He ducks into his tent and finds comfort in the darkness of it, knowing that she’ll be there anyway, awake and listening and smiling at his stories.

“Tyrell might have passed out on me outside medical,” he says, laughing. “But, listen, if I were him, I’d be nervous too. But not that much.”

He lays his gun down on the table in the middle of his tent – doesn’t even turn on the lights because he knows this place like the back of his hand.

And then in a quieter voice, he tells her of Jasper and Monty. “They met eyes today. Which… is a small step. But a progress, anyway. Jasper’s getting better – he’s actually cracking jokes now.

“Wick’s getting even less subtle nowadays,” he laughs again, remembering the rumor. He reminds himself to ask Raven of the truth tomorrow. “And I think Raven secretly likes it.”

He sits on his cot (not a bed – there are no mattresses, he gave those to Harper because she needs it more than him, and the watery smile she gave him warmed his heart, but she chalked it up to hormones), and toes off his boots, flexing his ankles. His muscles protest and he can already imagine _her_ own protest at this, but before that thought can form, he’s already speaking over it.

“Yeah, okay, I’ll dial down a bit on the standing for long hours of time,” he concedes. “I’ve already heard it from Octavia, no need to…” he coughs to clear his throat at the tightness in his chest as it begins once again.

He continues. “Octavia’s doing really well with the training – I – she’s just amazing. I’m proud of her.”

He shucks off his jacket and throws it at the foot of his cot, hearing it land with a rustle. He lies on his back, hands behind his head, talking to the ceiling in the dark. There’s a heaviness in his stomach and a prickling behind his eyes that are hard to ignore, but he swallows it down with one last story. One that he’s told every night for the past year, the shortest – the only one that keeps him sane.

“I’m getting by without you,” he whispers to the shadows, and he tells it like he’s finally doing it – like he’s finally moving on, even when he knows he could never ever move an inch away from the memory of her, of the trickle of her breath against his skin as she whispered the last words she had said to him.

He thinks he could have loved her more than he already has. He thinks he could have become her Atlas if she had just let him. But those are ‘what ifs’, and it does not do well to dwell on the ‘what ifs’. So he focuses on the tomorrow – and maybe tomorrow he’ll finally stop talking to the Clarke-shaped hole in his chest.

Today’s not that day.

**Author's Note:**

> Leave a comment or a kudos on your way out! :) Or come yell at me on my [tumblr](http://hooksandheroics.tumblr.com)!


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